Monday, February 11, 2013

My Day at Co-op

This is not atypical.

1. Running late. About to call the other teacher for our 9am to let her know I'm running late, when the phone rings. It's the other teacher. Her youngest son has just shot himself in the eye with a plastic pop-up thing. She won't be making it to the 9am class.

2. I pull into the parking lot at co-op at 9am. Maybe 9:01...but who's counting?

3. First class, "Fun and Games". We play two rounds of four corners followed by half an hour or more of "Fruit Salad"....except we make it "Candy Bag" in honor of Valentine's Day. It's a variation of musical chairs. The boys in the class turn it into a contact sport. My take on this is....no blood, no tears--next round!

4. Kids are super-hyper by the end of "class". Fix this by handing them chocolate and sending them on to their next class.

5. I eat a bag of sun chips during a member meeting so I have something on my stomach to take another dose of cold meds.

6. Turn in my photocopy request. Take a pair of crutches out to the van. Pay for pizza with money I borrowed from Sweetling. Make arrangements for Sweetling to attend the lazer tag outing on Wednesday.

7. Grade the Christian Life papers from my high school Life Skills class. Try not to feel too hypocritical doing so, when the spiritual maturity of some of the youth is so amazing.

8. Defeated by trying to sort five different colors of papers into 12 separate stacks. Rescued by a good friend who just took over and did it for me.

9. Pick up photocopies. Meet up with Toa of Boy. Make sure Toa gets his pizza and then drop Toa off with another great mom who offers to let Toa eat lunch with her and her boys.

10. Eat two bits of my sandwich and spend the rest of my lunch time setting up for Amazing Race.

11. This weeks challenge for Amazing Race is way too time consuming and unfun. Compensate by putting little chocolate candy bars on top of each stack of papers for the "Road Block." The students, being the awesome and terrific group that they are, take the terrible challenge on the chin and knuckle down and do their best without complaint. Eat an orange while they labor unjustly.

12. End of class is chaos. In retrospect, I know how I *should* have handled the scoring system, but hindsight is 20-20. My very patient aid in the class goes into 'damage control mode' and does ALL the clean up.

13. Head to my high school Life Skills class well after the start of the next class period. Ironically, the homework being handed in is on time management.

14. Have a nice, free-flowing discussion about what the students discovered in keeping their time logs for a day.

15. Went over the next week's assignment on Project Management. Used reorganizing my kitchen cupboards and baking supplies as an example. Made sure to put "Get help from my friend Jackie" on the list of project steps. At least I'm honest.

16. Talked about the sort of projects the students might complete for their Project Management assignment. Gave one young man permission to build something in Minecraft for his project. Release the class early.

17. Trying to organize the mad stack of papers I have from Amazing Race. Realize that there were 11 students in class today, and I have six copies of this week's homework assignment that got left behind on the tables after class. Spend the end of co-op trying to touch base with as many Amazing Racers as I can spot. Each one assures me that they put their homework for the week in their backpack. Resign myself to emailing the homework to the parents.

18. Meet up with Toa and Sweetling. Collect all our stuff. Go and sit and shiver on the playground till three o-clock so that Toa can play with his friends a bit.

19. Leave co-op.

20. Stop at Walmart for more cold meds. Toa requests bananas. We're also out of juice. In the produce section, Sweetling finds leeks and remembers a recipe from her manga cookbook that calls for leeks. We leave Walmart with cold meds, juice, bananas, leeks, asparagus, two loaves of French bread, and a box of bakery cinnamon rolls.

21. Next stop is the library. Toa has two Captain Underpants novels on hold and ready to be picked up. I have two Downton Abbey books ready to be picked up. Sweetling checks for the third book in a manga series she is reading, but it isn't in.

22. Home near 5pm. Many trips are needed to unload everything from the van. I start water boiling and toss pieces of chicken in the microwave to thaw. The menu for tonight will be chicken alfredo, grilled asparagus spears, and cheesy garlic toast. My sister calls and I burn the garlic toast to a crisp in the boiler. The asparagus spears get cold while I'm draining the spaghetti and dealing with the alfredo sauce, and I set off three smoke alarms in the house. No lie.

23. Sweetling miraculously makes it out the door in time for her 6:30 black belt class. I give Toa a blueberry brownie and sit down to watch last nights episode of Downton Abbey.

24. It turns out the episode was a two hour episode. Time to get Toa a snack. He shows me his castle he is working on for his Lego Designer class at co-op.

25. Get the week's school lessons for Toa typed and printed with a cup of hot chocolate and half a cinnamon roll to sustain me while I work.